


The Unsettlement of Being

by fullmetalslacker



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Confusion, Drabble, Drinking, F/M, First Kiss, Harry Potter - Freeform, Hogwarts, Humour, Music, Party, Post War, Romance, Unexpected Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 15:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalslacker/pseuds/fullmetalslacker
Summary: In which Draco is done with the dark side, very reluctantly at a wild wizarding party, and a little too fascinated by a strange blonde girl he thinks he kind of knows.





	The Unsettlement of Being

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun.

Draco Malfoy was never quite in his element at parties. Irrespective of personal preference, he was equal parts nervous and contemptuous whenever he was expected to put himself Out There. The enforced festiveness of it all made his stomach swirl in shaky Ferris wheel motions. None of it resonated with him - not the putrid smells of colourful alcohol and perfume fused sweat, not the inestimable crowds of stressed-out sparkly adults desperately trying to Let Loose, and most definitely not the blaring music that made his erratic heart thump to all the wrong beats.  
  
_Loathsome._  
  
It never worked for him. The lights, the noise, the energy.  
  
As a Malfoy, he had attended hundreds of these bloody parties and participated in thousands of the same old conversations with similarly inclined competitive purebloods. In high-class Slytherin circles, everybody was filthy rich and out to prove it, on principle. Draco had managed to salvage some pride for his magical bloodline even after The War but honestly, this routine was beginning to get on his nerves now. There was only so long he could resist rolling his eyes when a vague acquaintance flaunted yet another emerald studded wand hilt. 

He knew this wasn't true for the person he used to be, but things had changed. Since the death of the Dark Lord and the imprisonment of his father in the black pits of Azkaban, Draco had dealt with unbounded grief and confusion. His mother had gone through hell and being there for her had practically consumed all of his early twenties. His experiences proved to be indomitable barriers for his reentry into the world of casual materialism and complacency.

He was twenty-four, jaded far beyond his years, and perfectly disillusioned with the dark side.

Once you got over the initial mystery of the whole deal, it was quite pretentious anyway.  
  
What mattered now was that he had _real_ freedom on his hands. No oppressive fathers with silky, authoritative voices hovering over his free will. No expectations of cold-blooded murder. No scary Dark Lord in the room next door to his.  
  
And, thank the gods, no Potter.  
  
For the first time in his life, Draco was actually all right. Not particularly ecstatic, but not cripplingly depressed either. He almost smiled to himself sometimes. 

But this party was testing his patience.  
  
Clad in his charcoal grey dress robes, he loitered in a corner next to the Fire whisky bottles, awkwardly observing the fleeting group dynamics of people he sometimes referred to as Friends, albeit out of reluctant politeness. He was quite unforgiving when he was tipsy. In the group dancing to his left, the girl in the low-cut silver gown seemed to be the Queen Bee. With her high heels, glittery eyelids and pathological hair flipping, she dazzled right at the core of all the excited wizards. The men were clearly interested in her and the women were flocking to her because of all the men. It was all very obvious. Draco knowingly smirked.  He wondered if Pansy would have outdone her.

 _Hmm._  
  
Swirling his suspiciously yellow drink with a toothpick, he let his eyes wander lazily once the thought ran its course. There must be something worth watching somewhere. Interesting things were never too easy to find in his experience. He endeavoured to look past the drunk, swaying men and the makeup-caked women to the far ends of the grounds. The huge, outdoor party was in its prime. It was getting what one would call Wild in the bizarre disco balled clubs of the muggle world. The outrageously expensive band was playing charmed instruments with a passion that's almost exclusive to the medium of music. Glistening bodies feverishly moved in sync and there were hoots and whistles at off-key intervals in the middle of songs. Everything about the set up was a painfully typical version of Fun.

Draco flicked the white-blond hair away from his disapproving eyes, deciding on the absolute lack of entertainment in the fumbling crowd. He stretched his arms over his head and yawned without covering his mouth, too bored to care about the nuances of social etiquette. Having had enough he turned around to leave the party.

And then he saw her.  
  
And he couldn’t stop looking.  
  
On the left fringe of the large mass of drunken witches, she was dancing alone with closed kohl-rimmed eyes and a content, serene smile on her pale face. She wore bright orange slacks under a mustard yellow cloak, defying the norms of the highfalutin black-tie wizarding ball but just implicitly enough to avoid pointed scorn. Her long, dirty-blonde hair was an entangled mess and all her movements were gracefully fluid. But what made Draco fixate on her out of everyone else was the fact that she was moving contentedly to beats that were completely different from the song that was playing. There was a pink, sparkly mist over her that swirled in circular patterns, forming an umbrella that lent shade to her bobbing head.  
  
He was mesmerized. It felt like he had never seen something so enticing before.  
  
He wondered if he had seen the girl before when her identity dawned on him with a jolt. It was undoubtedly Loony Lovegood. That strange, disconcerting Ravenclaw he had often seen with Potter back in School. He scowled at the realization. She had been a part of the Order, and if memory served him right, she had been imprisoned in Malfoy Manor along with Potter and his friends on that fateful night when everything started unravelling for good. Draco cringed as he dwelt on the dark memory.  
  
_So many mistakes._  
  
He tugged uncomfortably at his shirt collar and decided, to his own surprise, to go and talk to her. He was bored out of his wits anyway. Besides, he only wanted to _talk_. There was no harm in arbitrary, polite conversation, it was a natural social phenomenon.

He tried to fathom this urge to approach her as he walked, pushing aside swarms of alien men and women. Some of it was out of the guilt he felt from the war that made him want to apologise profusely to everyone he could place within it, some of it was out of the mind-numbing frustration that had accumulated through the sluggardly minutes of the party...but there was a large part of it that he couldn't decipher the meaning of. If nothing occurred to him when he reached her, he planned elaborately to blame it on the drinks.

And, to an extent, rightly so.  
  
He went and stood a few feet away from her and waited for her to notice him, his heart thrumming loudly. _This was a bad idea_. His felt a twitch run down his arms as he looked around in desperate attempts to appear nonchalant. It was three fateful seconds before he started walking away that she finally saw him. He froze where he stood, pinned to the ground against his better judgement. She smiled almost instantly at recognizing him.  
  
“Hey,” she said in a dreamy voice, a placid expression on her face.  
  
“Hi.” He was swaying slightly with the music because standing still immediately didn’t feel right given the situation. It was getting very awkward and he was beginning to neurotically.second-guess his inherently questionable decision.  
  
“Are you not enjoying the party?” She raised her voice over the music. Her delicate features were thoroughly amused as she looked at him. There was an odd poise to her personality that didn't waver no matter what she did. Draco was intrigued.  
  
“Mildly. But you seem to be having the time of your life.” He answered, attempting to smirk as she politely nodded. _Not too bad yet_. “What is that pink mist?”  
  
“Oh, it’s a silencing charm. It blocks out all the sound outside of the ring over me. But don’t worry, I understand you. I can read lips.” She looked at him with piercing blue eyes. They almost looked beyond him rather than at him. “I could never get the hang of this music.”  
  
Draco stared at her. “How come you are dancing without music then?”  
  
Luna gave him another one of her soft smiles, making him very uncomfortable. His smirk flickered. “I have my own music in here.”  
  
“Really? What kind?” Draco blurted out. He was starting to remember why he kept away from her in school. His clouded mind was clearing up to a blinding sun of weird rumours he had heard about her.

She was absolutely disconcerting. And those eyes clearly saw far too much.  
  
“Well, the old songs by Goblin Rebellion mostly, and a few instrumentals by The Blind Dragons. You want to listen?” She looked into Draco’s eyes expectantly, and he suddenly felt like he needed to puke. The Slytherin in him was brimming with innovative mockery, but he resisted helplessly. She ambushed all his senses with her easy sincerity and commitment to conversation. Bewildered yet again by his own decision, he nodded slowly.

He really shouldn’t have had that yellow drink.  
  
Without a word, Luna drew out her crooked, light brown wand and swished it in complicated patterns. The pink mist twisted, drifted, and slowly extended over Draco’s head, forming an elliptical roof over both of them.

Now, there was absolute silence. He looked at the people dancing around him with strange, contorted expressions on their faces. They moved with such vigour, it was almost embarrassing to watch. Wide, psychotic grimaces that were meant to be smiles were being swapped like currency between faces unaware of what the attached bodies were up to. The twisted maze of limbs pulsed and throbbed soundlessly, satirising all that parties stood for, lending Draco a sense of acute dramatic irony in his perspective.

And before he knew it, he grinned for the first time in months. This was brilliant.   
  
“You’re different.” Luna had a very musical voice, like the tinkling of wind chimes. Draco snapped out of his head and turned to face her. She was watching him. She had been watching him all this time.   
  
“What do you mean?” he said slowly.  
  
“I remember you from school. You were quite an asshole.” Draco winced as Luna went on matter-of-factly. “And you were there at Malfoy Manor when I was imprisoned too. And when Harry escaped. You looked terrible then, but you’re better now. I can tell."  
  
Draco was taken aback by her bluntness. He didn’t think she would address the elephant in the...mist. “Uh…sorry about all of that. Times were…different. Back then.” He shifted uncomfortably.  
  
“It’s okay, I don’t blame you. It wasn’t your fault. I knew you didn’t want to be there at all. You were terrified.”  
  
“Er...”

Draco decided that it was time to leave. This wasn’t worth it. His face was getting hot and he was irredeemably mortified. Lovegood was a freak. What had he been thinking? He was going to watch the fire whiskies and the yellow drinks next time. They made him a vulnerable idiot.  
  
He was about to bid his harsh goodbye when Luna flicked her wand once and deep, melodious music surrounded them. Draco paused as all his offended thoughts folded over themselves in a warm muddle of drunken joy and homely comfort. He was sure he had never heard anything like it. His shoulders slumped on their own as a wave of relaxation washed over him. He forgot about leaving and looked at Luna, startled. She was doing her odd little dance again, her eyes closed and her body swaying lightly in those fluid motions of hers.  
  
Draco bit his lip. This was very strange. He still felt remnants of the uneasiness in his stomach that had been begging him to flee, but his mind refused to comply. He was definitely not in total control. None of the Malfoy charms seemed to work and he promptly forgot all of the sharp insults he regularly resorted to when he got this uncomfortable.  
  
Finally, after a lot of stressful deliberation, he reached a decision that would shock him every day once he reclaimed his sobriety: Draco Malfoy, brat extraordinaire and reigning king of stuck ups, decided in one magical, fragile moment that he was going to Let Go.

_Why the hell not, he was drunk anyway. Sort of._

Battling all his natural impulses and consciously choosing not to think any further, he closed his eyes bravely and started mirroring Luna’s movements. He was hesitant at first, but then he let the calming music seep into him and take over his incessant rationality.

Five minutes later, two blond figures could be seen swaying on the edge of the crowd, one lean and tall, the other short and petite, both entirely outlandish.   
  
Draco felt enchanted. A part of him wondered if he really was, but most of his parts didn’t care either way. He _needed_ this. All of his troubles were melting away until all that was left behind was music. He never wanted this to end. 

After what seemed like an hour, he opened his eyes hesitantly. He was standing very close to Luna. Her face was only inches away from his and her hands were brushing against him as she moved. Her hair flew around her in mad ringlets.  
  
Once again, he couldn’t look away.  
  
The song drew to an end and Luna’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t flinch away in disgust when she saw Draco Malfoy as close to her as he was. Neither did she blush. She just looked at him with those wide, glazed eyes and that slight smile of hers. Draco felt his nerves tingle. He stared right back, too dumbfounded to flinch. Gingerly, he moved his hand and cupped her face softly. She didn’t object and, if possible, seemed to deepen her gaze. His heart was hammering against his chest as he tilted her chin upwards and leaned in with his eyes closed. Their lips met as he kissed her tentatively, awaiting some sign of acceptance. She didn’t respond straight away but then he felt small cold hands trailing his neck and, ever so delicately, she pulled him close. Draco smiled as she kissed him back and moved his hands to her waist with a bit more confidence.

The kiss wasn’t romantic or lustful, it was just appropriate. She felt too surreal to be questioned and when they broke apart, he pressed his forehead against hers and looked sincerely into her kind eyes. He was suddenly aware of the engulfing silence, of the pink mist and the background of a mute, raging party. He breathed in and whispered earnestly “Thank you.”  
  
Luna laughed and nodded once. He knew she understood. He didn’t need to apologize or explain all that he had done in the past. He was a coward and a bully and a disgrace, but she understood and nothing else mattered. There was no pity in her eyes when she looked at him, even though he knew she saw how broken he really was. There was no glint of mockery or victory or contempt, and there certainly was no fear.  
  
She just knew. And that was enough.  
  
Draco realized he was staring at her and took two steps back as the moment dissolved. His glazed eyes became clearer and he blinked. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Had he really kissed her? _Was_ _this_ _real_? Luna looked surprised as he backed away, but she didn’t squirm.

She drew out her wand once again and coked her head to a side. “So, do you want to listen to all the other songs?”

 

Fin


End file.
